Spring Boot 2.1 brings Java 11 support and a bunch of new features and improvements

Spring Boot 2.1.0. RC1 was announced a couple of weeks ago and surprise, surprise: Spring Boot 2.1.0 has just been released. This release arrives with a significant number of new features and improvements in tow so let’s waste no more time, shall we?

Spring Boot 2.1: Highlights

Java 11 support

Good news! Spring Boot 2.1 remains compatible with Java 8 but now also supports Java 11. The team has “continuous integration configured to build and test Spring Boot against the latest Java 11 release,” according to the release notes.

Third-party library upgrades

Spring Boot 2.1 builds on and requires Spring Framework 5.1. They’ve upgraded to the latest stable releases of other third-party jars [wherever possible], as explained in the release notes.

The list of notable dependency upgrades in Spring Boot 2.1 includes:

Tomcat 9

Undertow 2

Hibernate 5.3

JUnit 5.2

Micrometer 1.1

DataSize support

A org.springframework.util.unit.DataSize property can be exposed if a property needs to express a size in bytes or similar convenient unit. Similar to the Duration which became available with Spring Boot 2.0, the data size supports an easy format (i.e. 10MB for 10 megabytes) and metadata support.

It should also be noted that all relevant configuration properties have been updated to use the new type.